


The Chord Dies

by QueSeraAwesome



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Background Trent Ikithon, Caleb does not appear in this fic, Do not copy this or any of my works to another website or anywhere else, F/M, Grief/Mourning, I HAVE NO FEAR, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Institutions, Missing Scene, Multi, Other, Polyamory, Pre-Canon, Trent does not appear in this fic, Warning: Trent Ikithon, Watch this get Jossed in a few weeks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 02:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19189984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueSeraAwesome/pseuds/QueSeraAwesome
Summary: After the fire, after they leave him at the asylum, there is nothing for Astrid and Eodwulf to do but return home.Figure out a way to go on without him.





	The Chord Dies

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Between" by Vienna Teng, which I listen on repeat anytime I write or have feels on these three. Her sweet wail on the title lyric pretty much sums up the mood of this whole fic. 
> 
> Warnings for mention of Trent Ikithon and asylum related trauma, manipulation, and the pain associated with it. Not on camera, but alluded to and talked about.

Eodwulf has an excellent poker face.

He does not use it for playing poker. It is still one of his most important skills, a skill he learned early in his studies with Soltryce, and worked on as diligently and as early as his second cantrip. It is an often used skill for one who does the type of work that he does, particularly on days like today. 

Especially on days like today. 

By the time they return the light has long started fading, the moon already rising over the pines. They step out of the teleportation circle and into the silence of the empty house, but neither of their faces waver, or change in any discernible fashion. They are not amateurs. Eodwulf turns and heads for the doorway. The whisper of robes against wooden floor behind him tells him Astrid is only a step behind. She follows him wordlessly to his room.

They do not speak on the short walk, or acknowledge each other in any way. They know better than to think they are unheard even when alone, at least outside the privacy wards on their personal rooms. He was always particularly skilled at those.

No sooner has the door closed behind them than they list towards each other like flowers to the sun, like puppets with their strings cut. Eodwulf falls back against the door, Astrid pressed all along his front, her arms wound around his neck. His hands tremble faintly as he brings them up around her waist. For all he is the greater in stature of the two of them, they both know which of them is holding the other together right now. Wulf has always been the strong one among them in muscle and body only.

They stand like that together for a long, silent moment, the uneven sounds of their breathing loud in the quiet of the room. Wulf, of course, breaks first.

“He looked—”

“Must you?” Astrid hisses, muffled from where she has buried her face in his chest.

“He looked so _empty_ ,” Wulf finishes, the words scraping their way out of his chest. Both of their chests, perhaps.

Astrid shakes her head, determined not to hear him. Her thin arms tighten around him like iron bands, punishing him for putting the images they both can’t scrub from their minds’ eyes out and into the stale air of his room, but all it does is squeeze the words out of him faster.

“So empty, so lost, and scared,” he babbles. “He looked like he did not recognize us at all.”

“Stop it,” she demands, her own voice rough with emotion. “What good does it do, Wulf?”

“He was terrified and we _left_ him there—”

She tears herself away from him, taking off her cloak with short, violent motions. Her shoulder blades bunch and flex like the wings of an agitated bird under the fabric of her robes.

“There is nothing we can do for him,” she continues as she crosses to the table to lay her cloak across the back of a chair. “He will be cared for. They will make him comfortable as they can. We should try to put the whole matter out of our min-"

“Do not recite to me, Astrid!” he snaps. “I heard the Master as well as you did.”

“Then you know there is nothing else for us to do!" she retorts, as if that settles the whole matter. Wulf has never been able to reach her when she gets like this, brusque and barbed. If only Bren were here, he could always—'

  —

         —

Bren isn’t going to be there to slip past Astrid’s barriers and draw her out.

Not anymore.

To his horror, he feels tears stinging at the corner of his eyes.

He can feel Astrid’s gaze on him and frantically wills them away, staring at the floor. In his periphery he sees her stall, the fight falling out of her small frame.

“Oh, no, _Süßer_ , no,” she croons. He closes his eyes, though it only seems to make the sting worse. When he opens them again she is back with him, small delicate hands, hands that hold power most men could only dream of, fluttering uselessly between them. “I’m sorry, I just. I don't. This isn't...“

He covers her hands with his own to quiet them, tangles their fingers together. Leans forward, slouches down until he can lean their foreheads together. She closes her eyes and for a moment; he sees a hint of shine of moisture beneath them before it is gone. He closes his own.

“It wasn’t supposed to be him."

Neither of them would have ever expected that Bren would be the one to break. If any of them ever broke under the strain, the pressure, the responsibilities heaped on their young shoulders, no one would have ever imagined that of the three of them it would be Bren.

Not Bren.

Never Bren.

They stand and squeeze each other's hands as he fights the offending tears back down, until his breathing evens back out. Both of them taking comfort in their closeness to each other, carving out of the small distance between them a place for them both to grieve. If only for a little while.

“He would not want us to stand here crying over him like a couple of fools,” she says, finally. She frees one of her hands to wipe at her dry cheeks as if she had been crying as physically as he had. His eyes are sore, but his cheeks are dry. “He would want us to keep going.”

“He isn’t dead,” says Wulf.

“And he isn’t here, either,” she replies.

It is true, and yet his ghost is still with them, hovering in the room.

“We have to keep it together, Wulf. For Bren.”

She lets him be the first to pull away.

He walks past her to the bed, sitting down heavily. The frame groans and he ignores it, as usual. His sigh is almost as weary. All of him is heavy and aching, but there are things they have need to speak on yet.

“We should decide what we will say when the Master asks us of him,” Wulf says. He lays back against the bed, already hating that they must have this conversation. “You know he will.”

Astrid hums an agreement. He cannot see her from this position, but he can hear her moving around the small room. No doubt straightening and tidying, a habit of hers when unsettled. When it becomes clear she will offer no other answer, he goes on. They cannot leave this for later.

“We should despise him for his weakness,” Wulf says. The words taste metallic and cold in his mouth, but not untrue. “For breaking."

“There is no shame in loving your parents," Astrid retorts, and he can practically hear her mouth setting in a stubborn line.

“Even if they are traitors?” Wulf presses.

“He passed the test,” Astrid insists. “We all passed the test, we did what had to be done. We put the Empire above ourselves.”

He pushes himself up on one elbow to send her a doubting eyebrow. It is not like her to be so optimistic. She glares back at him.

"What greater loyalty is there than to do what is best for the empire, despite any personal emotional toll?" she demands. Like they both do not know the answer: the kind of loyalty which casts off personal, emotional connections should those connections threaten the Empire. The kind of loyalty which experiences no emotional toll at all.

“Astrid…"

“He made the right choice,” she insists. “He did what was needed, and so he passed. If he ever ..." Her voice falters and for a long breath her eyes are far away. After a moment she shakes herself out of it and resumes her argument, voice taking on the tone she uses when spelling out a plan, a course of action, and how the boys would be idiots not to agree with her. "If he ever returns to himself, he should be able to join us. He will be able to join us. He is too valuable an asset to the Empire to simply throw him aside, should he become able to do the work again.”

“The Empire has no need for broken tools,” Wulf counters, not ungently. “And we both know the stakes are too high to risk any error. It is an honor, Astrid."

The Master's words, so often repeated, ring in their minds. _It is an honor reserved only for the best and brightest_.

Astrid's lip curls, conceding his point even if she won't say he is right. She does come and lie with him, though, slipping of both of their shoes and tucking herself up against his side, an arm thrown over his waist. He wraps one of his own around her shoulders.

“Even so, I do not want him to be ashamed of us, if he should ever regain his mind," she says, voice somewhat muffled by his shoulder. "We keep going. We serve, we do the work, and we do it well. For Bren. It’s what he would have wanted.”

She leans up and kisses him, a long, chaste brush across his mouth. As if proving to them both that they still can. Bren has not taken this with him, too. Wulf kisses her back.

With a wave, Wulf puts out the candles, and they settle in together. It is early yet, but still late enough to make retiring early not implausible. The two of them fit well in this bed together without any necessary magical assistance, without the cramped quarters of a third body to share the space with. Wulf can almost hear him, the way he sounded and breathed in the quiet moments before sleep. He is almost waiting for the mattress to dip with another weight, to feel him tuck his face between Wulf's shoulder blades, his cheek against Wulf's spine as he squished himself in behind him, like he always liked to do. Wulf wonders for how long Bren's absence will shadow them before they become accustomed to it. How long he will haunt them.

When Wulf next speaks, his voice is hushed, halting.

“.....You heard him.”

It is not a question, or at least not the one it sounds like. Astrid's chest rises and falls against his side, rises and falls again before she answers, equally soft.

“Yes.”

They don’t say anything more about it, haven't said anything more about it at all.

When Bren— when he had first broke, he had still been able to speak. Raving and incoherent in between brief lapses where he could string a sentence together.

_Lies! How many lies?! Broken mirrors in our heads and broken crystals in our arms! Smoke and mirrors! Betrayers and traitors, we are all of us betrayed traitors, don’t you see? Don’t you see? We sought to drive out the cancer, but we are the cancer, we are the virus, please, you must understand—_

Bren had not looked his parents in the eyes as they died, had not even seen their bodies after, and yet he had looked into the flames and saw something neither Astrid nor Wulf had. Something that had broken him. It had taken all of Wulf’s strength to keep him from throwing himself into the fire after them, to wrestle him back to their rented room still shaking and crying to himself. He degraded quickly after that, wasn’t speaking at all within a day of Master Ikithon tending to him. When they left him at the asylum he was shaking and mumbling in a corner, empty eyed and terrified of those he once loved.

Astrid must be remembering too, for it is a long time before she speaks again.

“We will not speak of it,” she says. And Wulf thinks tomorrow, or the next day, or the next time they are away from the capitol and the Master, they will sit on the floor together, the ritual for _Telepathic Bond_ laid out on the floor between them and speak of things they dare not say outside their own minds. Here and now, Astrid's fingers bury themselves so tightly in the fabric of his shirt he is surprised it does not tear. "You are all I have left, Wulf.”

Or maybe... maybe they will not. Maybe there will be no ritual, ever, at all.

“We cannot doubt now,” she whispers into the dark between them.

Bren would have known if she meant they could not be _seen_ to doubt, or could not _allow_ themselves to doubt. Bren could have told him which with the squeeze of his hand.

But Bren is not here. Wulf turns his head to press his face into her hair.

"I am with you, Astrid," he says, and means it.

It is not a lie. Ritual or no ritual, Wulf know this. at least, is true.


End file.
